I [23F] have a friend [23M] who I’ve known for about half a year now. We’ve hung out a fair bit together both in groups and, on occasion, alone. We’ve even had dinners alone together at each others apartments, so I realize that asking him out for food or coffee won’t necessarily come across as me asking him out on a date.

Since quarantine started, we’ve gotten really close and we text almost everyday and have really long facetime calls several times a week. But now I feel like I can’t continue our friendship with this much intensity without knowing whether he feels the same way.

I’m admittedly a bit of a chicken, and I don’t have any relationship experience (some dating experience though mostly through dating apps), so I was thinking about asking him out via text (instead of facetime) making it explicit that I’m asking him for a date. I also figured that if he’s interested he’ll say yes either way, but that if he says no then it will be easier for him to say no not to my face. On the other hand, I won’t be able to guage whether he says yes hesitantly…Any thoughts or pieces of advice?